PAST

Dr. Evermor (Tom Every) was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1938, just as the Badger Army Ammunition Plant was gearing up for operation in World War II. He remembers the patriotic collecting and recycling of newspapers, rags, and toothpaste tubes for the war effort when he was still at Lowell School in the early 1940's.

In 1946, his family moved to Brooklyn, Wisconsin, where he saved newspapers and scrap metal objects with his Cub Scout troop. When the scouts got out of the recycling business, he continued to collect and resell materials to a scrap yard in Janesville. In 1949, at age 11, he sold his first railroad car of scrap and founded the Brooklyn Salvage Company. He salvaged plastics from the Stoughton dump that his blind friend Clair Ellis wove into rugs.

From 1958 to 1964, Tom recycled and processed by-products for U.S. Rubber in Stoughton, forming his own company, the Wisconsin By-Products Corporation. In 1959, Tom visited Badger Ordinance for the first time, loading scrap for Zachary, Onikul, and Tom Samuels - three local scrap dealers. He returned in 1964 with the H. Samuels Company of Portage to remove miles of steam pipe from the rocket propellant area.

Over the next 20 years, Tom oversaw the wrecking of over 350 major industrial sites. He began to realize that the beautiful industrial objects that he was selling for scrap and meltdown were very much worth saving and "honoring." He developed an abiding respect and love for the industrial design and designers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He began to construct huge metal fantasy machines for the House on the Rock, the Don Q Inn, and many other places, using the industrial salvage material he had collected.

This shift from salvage and wrecking into recycling towards and artistic / historical / educational end is at the heart of Tom Every / Dr. Evermor's ongoing Forevertron project and his 1998 proposal to move to the northwest corner of the Badger Army Ammunitions Plant grounds.

PRESENT

Since 1984, Dr. Evermor has been building a huge sculpture park "environment" on land behind Delaney's Surplus, across Highway 12 from Badger Ordinance. The "Forevertron Set," as the combined art pieces are called, is a veritable museum of industrial design! Although well known by folk art fanciers from all over the world, the environment is less well known by folks in Sauk County.

Each sculpture in the park is constructed of hundreds and sometimes thousands of smaller iron, steel, brass, bronze, and copper objects that were originally designed for industrial use between 1850 and the 1930's. These tiny historic metal bits are changed as little as possible as they are blended and welded into artistic fantasies. When gazing on these artworks, people from all walks of life are able to identify pieces from the maritime and aerospace worlds, plumbing, breweries, candy companies, agricultural machinery as well as historic architectural fragments.

Dr. Evermor welcomes thousands of visitors from all over the world to the site every year. Television crews, writers, film makers, photographer, inventors, artists, musicians and folks from all other walks of live have found inspiration in the sculptures that are right here in Sauk County!

When the liquidation of the Badger Army Ammunition Plant idea came up in 1997, Dr. Evermor inspected the facility and was overcome with the "beauty," the history, and the mechanical riches of the machinery on the site. He walked into the compressor building and felts instantly that it was the "heartbeat of Badger!" The compressor building represented an industrial era, industrial workers, and industrial designers, that he respected.

He began to envision a marriage between his artistic creations and that history of the Badger plant.

FUTURE

Dr. Evermor feels that the best way to save the compressor plant (a little bit of Badger) is to integrate and recycle it into an artistic concept. As you see in the wonderful photos on this website, Doc would move his gigantic space travel machine, the Forevertron, from his site at Delaney's onto the compressor building at Badger, giving the impression that the Badger building is the "heartbeat" of Doc's sculpture world as well. The building would have bermed landscaping integrating the two parts, allowing visitors to peek into the "heart" of the sculpture in several areas.

The other fanciful support sculptures of the Forevertron set will be arranged around this center, creating a festive sculpture park. Doc envisions gazebos, picnic facilities, and viewing benches for visitors., A "beehive maze" of storage cubes full of sculpture materials will await sculpture students interested in contributing their talents to the site.

The land that Badger sits on has encompassed many emotions over the years. Farm families stewarded their beautiful land for decades only to feel duress and bitterness when the government condemned and appropriated their farms in the 1930's. Badger became a patriotic effort during World War II and a source of pride and good wages for many area families, some of whom continued the maintenance of the facility into the 1990's. At the same time, the site has caused anger and resentment because of pollution and the visual eyesore that it has become in its "old age."

THE VISION

Dr. Evermor sees his proposed sculpture park on the northwest corner of Badger to be a place where everyone in Sauk County can come together and heal the issues that have surrounded this beautiful piece of land. His proposal suggest that the sculpture park be:

1. A place that honors farm families who gave up their lands.

2. A memorial to munitions workers of America who followed patriotic feelings and who supported their families with their work.

3. An historic museum of industrial design that preserves an original bit of the Badger technology now to be converted to peaceful ends.

4. An educational opportunity for art students to help build onto the environment as well as a place for history buffs to see historical industrial objects.

5. A welcoming center for the land now entering a "new life."

Text by Ann Parker, Baraboo